Tica Douglas is the kind of musician who indulges the comfort of sadness. The Brooklyn-based songwriter's sophomore album, Joey, is crafted from the winsome murmurs and gentle guitar strums of someone left alone to think in their bedroom, and the result is a tender meditation on youthful malaise, intensified by Douglas’s status as a gender outlier. "Joey" was apparently the name Douglas’s parents were considering if Douglas "were born a boy", and the ambiguous state of identity (Douglas is non-binary, and as such doesn’t identify with any one gender category) is a source of the album’s confusion, yearning and wonder about who "Tica" is and where that person fits in the world.
Throughout Joey, Douglas’ forlorn ruminations take on philosophical implications. "I Didn’t" addresses the dull ache of past regrets with simple, subtly powerful language ("There was a party last night where you used to live/ And I wanted to go… but I didn’t"). Douglas's voice curls off in mournful tendrils on "Ease"—"I call you over and make up something to make you stay"—and the negative space conveys the weight of the song's loneliness. It’s only through Joey’s casual statements that Douglas gets at the crux of the real burden, which the difficulty of being inside one's own head. "I hope I don’t exhaust you like I exhaust myself," Douglas admits on the album’s opening song, in a voice heavy with palpable fatigue. Drums are used sparingly on Joey, giving the record a sighing feel that counterbalances its heaviest moments.
Because Douglas grew up grappling with the liminal space of gender roles, relationships are the axis around which Joey pivots. "Know More" dissects the difficulty of a same-sex relationship: "And I wanted them to like me," goes a line addressing a lover’s parents, "though I know I’m not quite what they had in mind for you." References to Douglas' family—"I grew up on the ocean with a family that I loved"—are delivered with a deliberateness that suggests the reflections are too comfortable to be the whole truth. "And my brother called to talk/ About my parents’ split," Douglas later qualifies, "I thought it never got to me/ But now I think it did." There’s an underlying sense that Joey is narrated in hindsight, its vignettes strewn together by someone who is still learning from the past.
And yet, the suffering of Joey is balanced with glimmers of optimism. "You don’t have to be broken/ To make heartbreaking art," Douglas sings on "All Meanness Be Gone". Here and throughout the album, the nostalgia feels distinctly hopeful, a mix of melancholy and the kind of catharsis that comes with exploring hurt in order to heal it. On "Too Long", Douglas reflects on a past relationship ("I learned the pain of too much tenderness"), but drags out the words as if to savor the sting. The harmonies on the record are straightforward—it's just voice and guitar—and the sparseness adds to the record’s intimacy. "Black & White" contains a declaration of love and loyalty to a significant other despite years of torment, and in these moments Douglas' voice is so melodious and enveloping that it immerses you like a fog—an atmosphere that’s bleak and enlivening at the same time. "I never have and never will understand why simple is so difficult," Douglas coos as if in summation on "My My My". It’s a profoundly relatable sentiment, and the simplicity is part of the charm: The beauty of Joey’s sadness lies in how it dignifies the mundane.
